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Nov. 10, 2015 - Art Bell
02:23:13
Art Bell MITD - Jim Elvidge Digital Simulated Reality
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From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you good evening, good morning,
good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's 25 time zones, each and every one
Covered like a blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
I am Art Bell.
Good to be here.
It's going to be a very, very, very good show tonight.
Any of you ever wonder if you're living in a matrix?
I hate to say it, but there's actually awfully good evidence you may be.
I only have two rules for this program during the first four days of the week.
No bad language.
No, no, no.
And only one call per show.
We do have youngsters listening out there.
And we also have new people listening out there.
I would like to welcome tonight K.A.R.T.
in Jerome Twin Falls, Idaho.
Welcome aboard.
You have no idea what you're in for.
1400 AM.
Jerome Twin Falls, Idaho.
Welcome to, I guess, the network.
I don't know what we are.
We're a conglomeration.
Okay.
So I've got a few things that I want to get out before we go to our guest.
The Cold War is getting hot.
It really is getting hot fast.
Russia is going to now counter NATO's U.S.-led missile defense program by, they say, deploying new strike weapons capable of piercing the shield.
This is according to the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
Putin told defense officials that by developing defenses against ballistic missiles, Washington aims to neutralize Russia's strategic nuclear deterrent and gain a, quote, decisive military superiority.
He said, Moscow will respond by developing strike systems capable of penetrating any missile defenses.
He said over the past three years, companies of the A military-industrial complex have created and successfully
tested a number of prospective weapon systems that are capable of performing combat
missions in a layered missile defense system.
Such systems have already begun to enter the military this year, and we are now talking
about development of new types of weapons," said Putin.
So I really think that the Cold War is heating up really fast.
Look what's going on in Syria.
Or, better yet, don't.
A small business jet, you may have seen it on CNN, crashed into an apartment building with a huge bang on Tuesday, killing at least two people aboard, shaking furniture and homes several blocks away.
You can only imagine a jet crashing into your home, right?
While everyone, including people across from me, were oohing and aahing and yelling aliens and UFO, that spectacular blue UFO right over Los Angeles, which of course turned out to be the launch of a Trident from a submarine, I don't get it.
I mean, really, the other folks were just screeching about that.
When you go back to what I think is really important, and that is our star, Tabby.
Oh, but wait a minute.
The Allen Telescope Arrays took a quick one-week look, I believe, with the Green Bank at Tabby, and they didn't hear anything.
So all of a sudden, everybody's saying, well, I told you.
Nothing.
Good Lord.
Even talking to Seth Shostak, he said likely they're not going to hear anything.
It's too far away.
14.8 light years away, right?
Almost 15 light years away.
That's too far.
And besides, who's to say that they, if there is a they there, are even using radio?
So, for people to begin discounting anything at all, because the arrays didn't hear anything in a week, is just ridiculous.
While at the same time, pointing to something going from ground, or in this case, sea, the ocean, into the atmosphere, has got to be aliens.
Ay, ay, ay, ay.
Oy vey.
Um, so, I thought I'd bring those things up.
A couple of other things that I want to bring up.
When do things come out of a black hole?
Well, never, right?
Well, wrong.
NASA, with two separate telescopes, just observed something coming out of a massive black hole, which I believe is Markeranian 335.
That's right, two of NASA's space telescopes, including the Nuclear Spectroscope, the Telescope Array NuSTAR, miraculously observed a black hole's corona launched away from the supermassive black hole.
Whatever it is, anything that can launch itself out of a black hole, probably we don't want anything to do with, I would say.
Say that's fair?
Anything that comes out of a black hole has got to somehow be bad news.
And now to a little bit of tonight's topic coming up.
If you think about it, it's amazing that humans exist, right?
For life to start on Earth, we need... Well, everything has to be just right.
Wouldn't you say?
We're amazing people.
We live in an amazing place.
And by that I mean, well, everything's just as it ought to be.
And how could that be unless somebody or something set it up?
Right?
Could we be living in a computer simulation?
Well, yes, we could be.
Would we know it?
No.
Well, there might be little hints that we're in a simulation of some sort, right?
Every now and then there seems to be a glitch.
I think we're not actually that far from being able to create a simulated world ourselves.
Once we create beings that are autonomous, are artificially intelligent, we could certainly create a world.
I'm not saying it would be ethical or moral, but we could do it and watch these little people run around in this world we have created for them as somebody may be watching us.
Anyway, Jim Elvidge holds a master's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University.
He has applied his training in the high-tech world as a leader in technology.
He holds four patents in digital signal processing, Kind of stuff we're talking about tonight, and has written articles for publications as diverse as Monitoring Times, and the IEEE transactions on Geoscience.
For many years, Elvidge has kept pace with the latest research, theories, and discoveries in the varied fields of subatomic physics, Cosmology, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology.
This unique knowledge base has provided the foundation for his first book, The Universe Solved.
So, coming up in a moment, we're going to talk about this possibility of living in a completely simulated world.
With Jim Elmich.
Should be very interesting.
And this is something I bet you haven't heard in a long, long time.
From the high desert.
This is midnight in the desert.
And believe me, it is a cold wind screaming out across this desert tonight.
Walking over here. I about froze to death I'm not a fan of the music, but I'm not a fan of the music.
I'm not a fan of the music, but I'm not a fan of the music.
To call the show, if you're east of midnight, call 1-952-CALL-ART.
If you're west of midnight, call 1-952-225-5278.
You've got to love that.
Jim Elbridge, welcome to Midnight in the Desert.
Great to have you back.
Thank you very much, Art.
It's great to be back and it's an honor to be on your show.
I'm really looking forward to this.
Oh, yes.
So, where to begin?
I guess here, Jim, I feel, after considering it and doing a lot of reading, That it's entirely possible.
Somebody wrote to me, by the way, before we go on, Jim.
Richard said, Hey Art, I think your stream got crossed with the Club 700 last night.
No.
That was good stuff.
Right out of Malachi's playbook, actually.
And most people loved it.
No, we didn't get crossed with anybody.
Isn't it possible that we're living now in a simulated environment?
You know, there was a movie, of course, The Matrix, but gosh, it seems so possible from so many angles.
Could it be?
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, one of the challenges I have in talking about this stuff, Art, is there are so many paths to go down, so I have to try to stay focused on one direction, but I'll say up front that I think, likely, the simulation idea is a little bit bigger than being in a computer simulation, and I'm sure we'll get to that.
But speaking of the computer simulation idea, Nick Bostrom, who you've probably heard of, is a philosopher from Oxford.
He posited back, actually, I think it was the same year that The Matrix came out, and The 13th Floor, and a couple other movies that talked about the same topic.
He had this paper called The Simulation Argument, and in his paper he presents three possibilities.
Assuming that we get to the point where we create simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, and it's pretty clear that we're going to do that.
I mean, we're already very close to that now with headsets and Oculus Rift and these kinds of things.
Probably another 20 or 30 years, maybe less, that we get something that's so indistinguishable from reality that while we're experiencing it we're totally immersed and we think we're in a reality.
So his argument goes like this.
Given that we're going to get to that point, and at that point we'll create millions of different simulations, what are the odds that we're 20 years prior to that versus in one of those millions?
You know, therefore the answer is the odds are pretty small.
So he said there's another possibility, which is we don't get there.
And there's two possible reasons why we wouldn't get there.
One, we destroy ourselves over the next 20 years before we reach that state, which he calls a post-human state.
That's looking increasingly possible, by the way.
And that's possible, certainly.
And then the other option is that we just consciously decide not to pursue that.
And I think that's kind of Kind of a non-starter.
Like, when do we ever not pursue something that has some dangerous possibilities?
We never don't do that.
So, you know, cloning, nuclear technology, nanotech, you name it, we always pursue it.
So, I think if you're an optimist, you almost have to say the odds are very good we're already living in a simulation.
If you're a pessimist, you would have to say we're going to destroy ourselves before we get the chance to.
That's how his argument goes.
And it's kind of hard to find fault in that logic.
Maybe the end of the game is just to see whether we destroy ourselves or not.
Maybe that's where... Game over.
Want to play a game?
So, everything is so perfect, Jim.
The sun is where it needs to be.
The things we need on Earth are where they need them to be.
We couldn't be here without... If black... If...
Matter, dark matter, were any thicker and more abundant than it is, we couldn't exist.
I mean, there's a million, gazillion different things that have to be just perfect for this world to be working as it is.
So, you know, I mean, you could certainly posit that somebody put that together and the game is on, as it were.
Right, and you've mentioned just a few of them, but even just the ability to have a reality, just the ability to have space, is incredibly improbable.
Something like, I think there's one part in 10 to the 115th Where the universal constant cancels out vacuum energy.
That's a really incredible coincidence.
They say that the deviation in the expansion rate of the early universe of one part in a billion, either way, would render the universe void.
It would either rip apart so fast that matter would not be able to form or it would contract on itself and disappear.
There's dozens of these kinds of things, even before you get into the rare odds of creating life.
So yeah, it does seem to be lined up exactly perfectly, which some people would say, okay, well, that's evidence of a creator of sorts.
But then the scientific argument against that is the anthropic principle.
It's a combination of the anthropic principle, which says that, of course, we're in something that's perfectly designed, because otherwise we wouldn't be here to observe it.
But that implies that there must be, literally, and I know this isn't a word, zillions of
other universes or other constructs out there in that sort of quantum mechanics, many worlds
interpretation of quantum mechanics.
There have to be such an incredibly huge number of universes that don't have the right set
of parameters to create matter and to create life.
And we just happen to be in the one that isn't.
And I don't know, to me that sounds like much more hand-waving than the idea that you have
some large system that constantly improves.
improves on itself and fine-tunes itself over time, which is more the way I think the universe
might have evolved.
Well, again, if you go back to the Matrix idea for a moment, it might not be perfect.
Number one, it seems to me that the designers would have to create something to keep us
a little bit in line.
Now, that would be God or that would be something in our brains or our genetic makeup that causes us to worship.
Now, if you go to the most remote islands in the world, they worship something.
The sun, the moon, the local water supply, whatever it is, they worship something.
Everybody does.
It's like, as human beings, we are programmed to worship Something and so the creator would have to throw that in I suppose keeps in line a Yeah, I think so and actually it's interesting you bring that up that Probably the origin of those you know those elements of worship are things like spiritual experiences So most all religions have at their core a spiritual experience that they're based on the spiritual experience is
You know, from Judaism and Islam and Christianity and other shamanistic religions, they have commonalities, which is very interesting in and of itself.
Those commonalities are things like the idea that we're all connected somehow, and that we're connected to something greater, and that God or whatever is within us.
And it's so consistent around the world and across time that you have to attach some significance to that.
So, that in and of itself tells me that there's, you know, and of course religions then went off on different directions, mostly to control people, I think, but that, you know, that nature of worshipping came from these spiritual experiences, not necessarily from, you know, a brain function.
And people even have those experiences today.
So, mystical experiences are relatively common.
How far are we in years, Jim, from being able to create?
Let me rephrase that.
From being able to be ourselves creators.
In the big G sense.
That's a good question.
In other words, as digital processing gets better and better and better, The ones in this program may be creating another program.
I'm saying we might create a digital world full of little artificially intelligent beings, and we could give them the world we want to give them, essentially creating their universe, right?
Sure.
Interesting that you say that.
Andre Lind, I think it was, is a well-known physicist.
Something like, and I'm probably going to botch his quote here, but on the surface of it, based on the evidence, it looks like the universe was created by a physicist hacker.
So, you know, even when we look at science, it looks like, you know, it has been created that way.
And there are a lot of people who speculate about the possibility of us playing God and being able to create a universe at some point.
So, you know, I think about, you know, we could really dive down into the idea of what reality really is.
We really are living in a subjective experience.
In a way, we can create that by dreaming or imagining or whatever.
I think one of the things that keeps us in line is the fact that the way this system, and I'm going to call it a system, we could call it God, we could call it all that there is, but the way that it seems to work is that the reality that we think is hard, that's in front of us, which isn't.
Physicists have proven that there is no objective reality.
I'm sure we'll get into that.
But that reality that seems hard has a high degree of consensus between different people.
So you see a blue car drive down the road.
I see a blue car.
We both say, hey, do you see that blue car?
So we both feel that each other has the same experience.
Therefore, that experience seems objective to us rather than subjective.
But it really is subjective.
Everything that we experience is based on signals that are being processed by our brain, if not a deeper kind of information.
So the fact that we all have this consensus reality is what kind of keeps us thinking that things are deterministic and continuous and materialist, because that's what it looks like at the surface.
However, what's really interesting right now is that We have gone so far in technology and science that we're able to create experiments that are poking holes in that.
And that is just blowing away the minds of the more closed-minded scientists and fascinating the minds of the more open-minded ones.
Well, in our universe we have a certain set of laws that we live by.
We have physics, and generally these are like laws.
I mean, there are certain rules.
Science can determine certain things.
They can cause these things to be replicated, amazing as they may seem.
These are the laws that we live with in our universe, or our matrix.
Now, occasionally, I mean, not even Microsoft is perfect, right?
Not even Microsoft.
So, occasionally, oh I don't know about you, but occasionally I'll get my computer will freeze.
Suddenly.
Or I'll get a blue screen.
That's really bad.
Or any number of things that happen with a computer and with programming, perfect as it may be, something somewhere in the machine, you know, throws up and it freezes.
So, So, I guess what I'm saying is, what we call the paranormal, what I call the paranormal and talk about all the time on this radio program, maybe it's...
Somebody's programming error.
You know, some update that didn't happen quite right or something.
And something glitches in our world, in our matrix, if you will.
Something that shouldn't happen according to the normal laws of physics, as we understand them, happens.
And we can't explain it.
So we put it away somewhere and we don't.
We just say, ah, glitch.
Exactly.
That's definitely one way of looking at the paranormal as a mistake in the Matrix.
It could also be something intentional.
Perhaps we're meant to be able to experience those things rarely or certain people might be able to experience them because it gives us a hint of a greater reality and it gives us a hint of Or give us the impetus to push forward with research and things like that, which I think is interesting and keeps things moving.
So yeah, it could be either way, but the paranormal, I mean, people freak out at that word, but my goodness, you know, the studies that have been done really demonstrate that it exists.
I'm sure, I know you're aware of the Global Consciousness Project, Princeton Engineering.
Oh yes, oh yes.
People have done the estimates of the odds against chance of those eggs lining up the way they did to be on the order of a billion to one.
There's another, Professor Daryl Bem at Cornell University did some precognition studies that were fascinating studies.
The odds against chance of those We're something like a million to one.
And then Dean Radin, of course, did some meta-analysis of all these Gansfield studies, these telepathy studies, and found odds against chance was like 1 times 10 to the 16th to 1.
So it exists.
Yeah, the paranormal, or what we call paranormal, which you could call subtle energies or something like that, it exists.
It's just not deterministic.
We can't reproduce it all the time.
Maybe some people can a little bit.
There was even a cute little offshoot from what they did at that university, and they created a little program for computers.
I wonder if you ever saw it.
Can't remember the name of it now, but for example, it would put a picture of Earth on your computer screen.
And it would sort of go between earth and total static.
And then the earth would begin to come back again.
And the object of the game was to sit there and concentrate as hard as you could in either getting complete static on the screen or the picture of the world on the screen.
And it was a sort of a mini consciousness experiment.
And I'm telling you, I was pretty good at it.
Interesting.
That's great.
Did you kind of record the results and find... I mean, I always think about these things in terms of mathematical probabilities, and sure enough, similar kind of thing.
I've had these experiences where I see the number 1111 all the time, and I have friends that do as well.
I don't know what the deal is with 1111, but I started thinking, oh, well, it's just coincidence.
I happen to be looking at my watch or my phone a lot, so of course I see it, so I actually did I did the analysis of it.
I wrote down every single time I saw it, and there's only two times during the day when you're going to see it.
Over a period of two months, I wrote every one down, and then I also did, at a separate time, I estimated how often I looked at my phone.
And it turns out, it is statistically significant.
All right.
Well, there you have it.
Your glitch and matrix.
Hold on.
Jim Elvich is with us.
I'm Art Bell, and this is Midnight in the Desert.
Roaring through a cold desert night to get to you this night.
It really is cold out there, baby.
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Travel the world and the seven seas.
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Happy birthday, Marines!
It is the Marine Corps birthday.
My dad was a Marine.
My mom was a Marine.
She was a... a drill sergeant.
You can imagine what my childhood was like.
So, Jim Eldridge is here, and we're talking about a digital world.
I guess that's what we're talking about.
But, you know, it's also silly because we have free will, right?
I was told that I think we do.
I don't think the idea that the world is digital or discreet in some way negates the possibility of free will.
I don't think free will has anything to do with whether it's continuous or digital.
It's inherent in consciousness.
If we didn't have free will, we wouldn't really have consciousness, so I believe we do.
But couldn't it be free will within the constraints of those who designed it?
Well, I think, again, it could be.
Certain avenues we can't pursue no matter how much we try to will ourselves to do it.
So in that sense, yeah, we're living in this construct and we're, as you mentioned, subject to the laws of physics, for example.
So, yeah, there are some rules that we have to follow, and we can't necessarily will our way around them, although some people seem to be able to do that now and then.
Premonitions, telepathy, and those kinds of things.
Yes.
So that, I mean, again, that's a little evidence that there's just something much bigger than the sort of deterministic reality that we're told there is.
Just categories of evidence all over the place.
Alright, well, you have a theory, right, called Digital Reality Theory.
And it basically, I think, says that matter, like the desk in front of me, all this junk in front of me, is nothing really but, or could be nothing but data.
And yet, it feels so real, it feels like matter.
And if I bat my head against it, I'll get hurt.
Right.
And you do get hurt because, if you think about it, it's It's forces.
There are some rules going on there that say when the molecules in my fist get really, really close to the molecules in the desk, there's going to be some force that repels them quickly, and that repulsion is creating the pain.
But it doesn't mean that there's any real stuff there.
In fact, we actually never really touch those molecules.
It's pretty much impossible to.
So, you know, I come at this from the idea of, if I look at the big picture of what we think reality is made of, the ancient Greeks, and even back to, say, the 1800s, John Dalton's theory of the atomic model was that everything was made of atoms, these hard little billiard ball circles of gold or iron or whatever it was, whatever element it was, and they're all just jammed together.
So, the only space that existed in a solid material was sort of the space between these atoms, and if they're spherical, that ratio is like 0.74.
Now, in 1911, Ernest Rutherford and others found that, well, you know, most of atoms are really empty space, and there's this little hard nucleus here, and everything else is empty space, in fact.
The size of the nucleus compared to the size of the rest of the atom is 1 over 10 to the 15th.
So it's, what's that, quadrillionth or something like that.
And so that was the theory for, and I say theory because these things just get overturned every so often.
That was the theory for 60 years until quark theory, quantum chromodynamics came around in the 60s and 70s.
And that theory said, well, even those hard little neutrons and protons, Uh, that we, we think are the ultimate building blocks of matter.
They're mostly empty space.
And they, they really consist of much, much smaller quarks that we've, you know, bounded the measurement of those things to be much smaller.
In fact, so now as of 1970, the thought was, well, you know, this, this solid matter is one part in 10 to the 30th, which is roughly equivalent to a grain of sand in the, all of the grains of sand of the earth.
So it's that tenuous.
And then along come the string theorists who say, well, wait a minute, you know, even quarks are nothing more than vibrating bits of string, and that string has the width of the Planck length, which is 10 to the minus 35th meters.
And so if you do that calculation, they're saying that quarks is mostly empty space.
And really, you know, matter, hard matter, is 1 times 10 to the minus 52.
If you plot this out on logarithmic paper, you realize that we lose about 15 orders of magnitude in our belief of how dense matter is.
We lose about 15 orders of magnitude every 65 or 70 years or so.
And so, where are we heading with this?
I mean, I think it's kind of obvious where we're heading.
There's no need to have stuff.
Matter is just data and the forces are rules.
In fact, even the string theorists will say that Holy mackerel!
is defined only by the frequency of the vibration of the string.
Well, if it's defined by that frequency, then you don't need anything else.
You just need the number that corresponds to that frequency, and you can create whatever rules you need to create from
there on out to create the physics that we have.
So there's no need for physical stuff.
I think that's just one of the logical arguments that matter is ultimately just data.
Holy mackerel.
Matter is data.
So then doesn't that sort of coincide with what I said earlier?
If matter is data, then isn't there a better argument to be made that we are living in some sort of digital construct?
I think so.
I don't think it's just that either.
For there to be a continuous reality, all kinds of problems exist with that.
The idea of continuous reality means sort of infinite resolution.
You know, as far as the physics that we know, matter implodes into black holes at scales below the Planck level.
Relativity and quantum mechanics don't coexist.
And the only things that physicists can come up with that make quantum mechanics and relativity somewhat coexist are string theory and loop quantum gravity.
And those only work with a minimal length scale, so they're already discrete.
And here's another one, Art.
The idea of spins, particles that have spin, this is a bizarre one.
These particles have an integral number of spins.
So certain particles have a half, not integral, but a discrete number.
A half spin, one and a half spin, one spin, zero spin, things like that.
And when they undergo some sort of transformation, they instantaneously change their spin.
They don't go from a one spin down to a .9, a .8, and down to a .1, and then a zero, like, in a continuous way.
It just snaps right from one to zero.
And there's nothing, that's completely anomalous in a continuous space-time model.
So, the evidence is all out there that reality is discrete and digital.
In fact, we've never really measured anything to an accuracy below, I think, 10 to the minus 16th.
or sixteen digits of accuracy.
So there's no real evidence for a continuous world, it's just that
we're at a macroscopic level, everything looks continuous, but there's tons and tons of evidence for a discrete and
digital world.
And so that does lend all the support to the idea that we're in some sort of,
you know, I hesitate to use the word simulation because that implies... Digital construct.
Yeah, digital construct, exactly.
I think it's a better way to describe it.
Yes, well, maybe.
It's going to get us both in trouble with all kinds of people out there.
Oh, sure.
I've gotten plenty of hate mail.
Have you?
Because, of course, this could be a digital construct of, you can imagine, anything.
It could be God.
It could be a God.
But then we get to this point where here we are in modern America and we're getting very close, I think, to something that approaches Artificial intelligence.
I mean, if we get there and if we keep increasing technologically as quickly as we have been in, say, the last 50 years, it won't be all that long.
We'll be able to create a world ourselves.
But boy, what a lot of questions would go into that.
Sort of like a super second life or something, you know, where you've created an entire world, but you've got autonomous beings walking around in it, thinking as we think.
Yeah, I think that's where this whole theory gets really interesting.
In my belief, there's another half to the idea.
We talked about the digital nature of things, but then there's the consciousness as the source of everything as opposed to an artifact of a complexity of a computational system like the artifact of a brain.
I think consciousness is primary.
It's not something that's an emergent property.
And the evidence for that is all kinds of things, near-death experiences, out-of-body
experiences, mystical experiences, paranormal and so forth.
So if that's the case, then just creating an AI doesn't inject the soul into it, doesn't
inject the consciousness into it, because consciousness is primary.
You can't create an AI and inject consciousness into it or hope that consciousness emerges
from it if that's not the way it works.
Well, can you define consciousness?
I don't know.
I mean, honestly...
All of this is theory, as everything else is just theory, but it's theory that has so much weight behind it.
I think Tom Campbell's description of consciousness is a really good one.
He calls it organized bits.
Consciousness is organized data.
I like that because at the real fundamental construct of reality, like way below what we're able to experience, Things could be digital and our consciousness is embedded in that.
So that's, it's something that we can't interact with because it's part of us.
It could well be, Jim, that when we get to artificial intelligence, we also arrive simultaneously with consciousness.
That could be too.
And one of the things I've kind of thought about is if The construct that we make, the AI that we make, is complex enough to house a soul, to house a consciousness that we're used to.
Our consciousness may decide to make the jump.
It may decide, oh, this is an interesting thing.
I'd like to experience what it's like to be a complex silicon beast, as opposed to a complex carbon-based human beast, and try it out.
I like that world.
In that world, you know, you don't have sore backs and knees.
You don't walk around as you get older in pain.
That's a wonderful world.
Perhaps not in my lifetime, Jim, but it's going to be possible eventually, I suppose, to, as you've seen in many movies, download a human brain into a machine.
Well, it's interesting you bring up the idea about sore backs and knees.
We have decided to, for whatever reason, spend a lot of effort and energy on life extension.
If, as I believe, we are already immortal, we have an immortal soul that reincarnates, then life extension is kind of a waste of energy.
You know, our purpose is something beyond what we're here on the last 20 years of our life on earth to do.
If you kind of think about what life is like, there's sort of a natural growth pattern.
As an infant, we don't have the ability to learn too much until our brain is formed.
Then we go through this steep period of growth and experience and maybe we are learning the lessons
we are supposed to learn, learning to be patient, learning to love or whatever.
And then at some point we have learned what we can learn in this life and we need a different
set of experiences.
So the natural way is we die naturally, we reincarnate and have a different set of experiences
and we continue to evolve our consciousness in that way.
However, if instead we extend life artificially, we just spend the last 20 years of our lives living in a miserable way.
Delaying the point when we're going to reincarnate anyway, and slowing down our ability to evolve our consciousness.
On what evidence do you base this statement that we have a soul?
Okay, so let's talk about near-death experiences.
Okay.
The evidence for near-death experiences is actually tremendous, and the one example I always use, and I hate to use the same one because I could jump into some others, but probably the most dramatic is a woman named Pam Reynolds.
I was a singer from Atlanta.
I know her.
She had an aneurysm in her brain.
I know, I know, I know.
I know Pam.
I interviewed her.
Did you?
Yep.
Yep.
And she had a fully conscious experience with no blood flowing through her brain, completely
flat lined, you know, impossible to have.
I mean, that's just one example.
There are lots of people who have had these things and had corroborating, you know, experiences.
They see what happens to them on the operating table.
They fly out of a hospital window, and they see something on a roof that there's no way they could ever see, and somebody goes up there and ensures it's there.
But, Jim, it's still subjective.
I mean, there is no scientifically verifiable proof of what you're saying.
I don't worry about that too much.
I don't think there's scientifically verifiable proof about anything.
Well, I mean there are certain things, as we discussed, we have the laws of physics that pretty much are uh... repeatable and very scientific and I hate to jump over on away from where I normally am discussing paranormal type things and the ease and all the rest of it but I don't hold that they're absolute truths I just I can't until I it's even like God I can't even positively say there is a God at this moment I suppose I believe in very little that I can't touch prove or replicate
No, I understand and I sympathize with that, but I'd submit that science isn't about proof.
Mathematics is about proof.
Science is about evidence and theories.
The better the theory, the more evidence there is to support it.
Take Newtonian mechanics.
Newtonian mechanics is a great theory at large scales and slow speeds, but it fails at some extremes.
Other theories of matter completely failed at small scales when quantum mechanics took over.
So, everything is really just a theory and it evolves as a theory.
So, you know, what it really is, I believe, is these are the rules that are in the quote matrix or in the system, the digital system.
These are the rules that we have to deal with and we're uncovering those as we You know, as we develop experiments that push the boundaries of physics.
So, things like relativity are, you know, great enhancements to Newtonian mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is the one that's blown the doors off of this stuff.
Well, I appreciate your sympathy.
I actually, what's the right word?
I guess I envy people who have absolute faith.
I talk to them every night here on the radio.
Absolute faith in God.
Jesus, the Lord, all of it.
They just absolutely buy every bit of it, and I envy them.
I don't have anything bad to say about them at all.
I actually envy them because they live with such calm, absolute faith.
I wish I could do that.
I can't do that.
I imagine that the world that you talk about, this digital construct, is absolutely possible, as possible as anything else we talk about.
Because I wonder, do you really think that's what we're in, Jim?
And you do, right?
And I actually agree with you, Art.
I mean, my background is engineering, and I took more physics classes than anything else.
I probably would have headed in that direction if I thought there was more money in it than engineering.
But yeah, I'm trained in the scientific method.
I was that kind of person.
I'm that kind of left brain person that needs to be shown things and needs to be shown proof.
But over time I realized that there's really not much proof about anything.
So it really comes down to the amount of evidence.
And I think there's zero evidence or very little evidence for a continuous deterministic Uh, theory of reality and a ton of evidence for this greater theory that I'm talking about.
Alright, quick two minute break, Jim.
We'll be right back.
Jim Elvidge, I guessed.
Could it be a kind of a matrix we're in right now?
Hehe.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Only you believe my heart.
Only you believe in my heart.
Think goodbye.
All I've got to do is to love you.
Be happy.
All I've got to take is a voice.
Make it blow away, blow away, blow away.
That is such a simple little song, and you can get so hooked on it.
I guess you got the number, but don't call yet.
We'll get to you shortly.
On the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
I guess you got the number, but don't call yet.
We'll get to you shortly.
Jim Melvidge is here, and we're talking about a digital reality.
Are we living in a digital reality?
He says yes, we are.
And so, here's a good question.
What would be the difference, objectively, between a digital reality and an analog reality?
Oh, good one.
So, from our perspective, Nothing.
We're at too high of a level to really see a difference.
But there are possible ways to test it.
And this is what makes a good scientific theory.
And they're doing this.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Holometer.
I can't remember the name of the guy.
It's at Fermilab in Illinois.
They're developing a very sensitive piece of equipment that determines if Light has a preferred travel direction.
Thinking that, you know, if we can show that in one direction light travels with a little bit less interference than in another direction, then that might indicate there's sort of a lattice to space.
Unfortunately, they can only go to a certain resolution, which is way above the Planck level, and I kind of suspect that our reality is actually even below the Planck level.
That's not going to necessarily give us a result, but you have to get pretty deep to be able to see the difference.
Now, the other kinds of things are things like the paranormal things that we talked about.
If you accept the idea that what we really are is a consciousness, a digital consciousness in a greater system, and I am one and you are one.
There's a construct there that we can communicate with.
I can send you, I think your guy in the break there said, pounding packets.
I could pound packets across this construct to you and you could understand what's going on in my head.
Or we could pound packets from a simulation of what the future would look like and have some premonition.
So things like paranormal experiences can be completely explained with a digital nature of reality, but they can't really be explained with a continuous one without invoking all kinds of new Okay, Jim, if we pound packets the right way, do you think we could pound them back in time?
Ah, that's the ultimate question.
So, let's explore that.
Time travel, that's a great one.
And by the way, before you go on, I get a science magazine every month, latest in science, whatever it is.
Scientists have now been able to make light go back in time.
Now, not by much, but they had several mirrors hooked up and then sent a light pulse through a dead rabbit.
It's a long, weird story, but they actually claim they made light go back in time.
Well, that's interesting.
I remember reading a long time ago about something like that, and there was some, you know, light dispersion in the communication channel that made Sort of the waveform of light moved back in time, but when you did the math, it was the photons were still moving forward.
I'm not sure.
I don't remember that real well, but I mean, it's an interesting result.
The other thing I would, you know, bring to bear on this is the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser Experiment, which is an experiment that probably has more to do with the observer effect than anything else, but it appears to show Retro-causality.
It appears to show that when we observe something, we cause something in the past to change.
Are you aware of this one?
No.
This is a great experiment.
It's an offshoot of the double slit experiment.
The thing with the double slit experiment is that it's been called the most beautiful experiment ever created, and it's really phenomenal what kinds of questions it's led to in terms of the nature of reality.
So one of them that it's exposed is the idea that when we observe the slit that a particle goes through, The interference pattern disappears because now we've established a definitive position for that particle.
When we don't observe it, there's an interference pattern on the screen beyond the two slits.
And this has baffled people for years, and it's been the reason why they've come up with 15 different interpretations of quantum mechanics, all that have a unique explanation for this effect.
So some people have said, well, it's the act of observing is interfering with the particles like if we're shining
light on the particle to see where it goes through
that light is perturbing it a little bit so they keep on getting... scientists have been very very
clever about removing the influence of the measurement apparatus
from this experiment and even to the point of moving the measurement
behind the screen so that the measurement occurs after the particles have created the pattern
on the screen.
So it's impossible to influence that outcome, but what happens is when you do observe it, it shows the non-interference pattern.
When you don't observe it, it shows the interference pattern.
Retro causally so that that's another example of something going back into the past and making making a change so you know, I think time travel in the sense of Going back to say, you know the Kennedy assassination and trying to you know, see what happened I don't know that that might be pretty tough.
However, I The remote viewers, the SRI remote viewers, did a lot of things moving around in time as well, and I think that there's information that's in the quote matrix or in the system that is a record of everything that ever happened, so therefore you could tap into that.
You should be able to go back, look, observe it, Not necessarily interact with it, but if you do interact with it, then it would probably create some sort of branch that went down a different path then.
Or maybe it's all like a giant drive inside a computer, and if we just learn to go to the right sector in the right place, maybe we can observe, maybe we can play it back.
Exactly, and I think that's probably pretty likely that we can tap into that.
You probably remember the line from a Moody Blues song, thinking is the best way to travel.
Oh, yes.
I always love that line, because people talk about, well, you know, what's on the other side of the moon, or what's here, what's there?
The remote viewers thought their way to seeing those kinds of things, and they can think their way with Maybe proper protocol.
Think the way back into this sector that you're talking about and observe things from the past.
Or, if we get proper control of those packets we were talking about pounding away at, maybe we can just actually see it.
Maybe we can view it on the screen.
Maybe we can be into that reality if we manipulate it all correctly.
I mean, anything might be possible.
Sure.
I've been meditating for years and I've found that some of the experiences I've had while meditating kind of defy my sense of logic.
And I think it's the clearing of the mind that allows you to maybe push some packets around, to tap into some things, to tap into the greater reality that you're not normally able to do because your mind is full of monkey chatter.
You're a somewhat compromised scientist, aren't you?
I would say so.
That's one way of looking at it.
Yeah, it is.
But I like what I've learned.
Yeah, good for you.
Let's take what ECOCI, the research lab in Vienna, found out.
They determined, they did some experiments that are based on the double slit experiment, that objective reality doesn't exist to a certainty of 1 in 80 orders of magnitude.
Again, if it's all subjective reality, then it's a lot softer than we think it is.
We just need to learn how to adapt to that, or how to make use of it, or whatever.
All right.
A lot of scientists disagree, of course, with these ideas.
When you get in discussions with them, you've done a lot of science that went over heads tonight already, believe me, including mine.
So, when you get into talks with other physicists, scientists, how many even come close to agreeing with you a little bit?
Some of them do.
And the ones that do are people like, I haven't actually had a direct conversation with Michio Kaku, but people like that who have an open mind.
I really respect that.
I mean, I respect all science.
I respect people who have a A very narrow focus and know everything about their field.
But, like Mahatma Gandhi once said, an expert is somebody who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
So, if you're not getting the big picture, you have a little bit of a tunnel vision.
And I think sometimes scientists do have tunnel vision.
The foundation of their research or the basis of their tenure is based on what everybody else thinks.
And so they can't stray too far outside of that.
And I've actually heard a lot of scientists say things like, Oh, I love what he's doing over there.
I love the boundaries that he's pushing.
Just glad it's not me.
Right.
Does your theory explain the existence of God?
It does.
The way I view it is that God is not an intentional creator.
He's not a human-like form, a guy with a big white beard.
I don't even like using the word God because words are powerful.
We all have impressions that come into our mind when we say words.
God is one of those things that everybody has some impression about.
What do you mean by that?
I tend to use the word system, but that sounds really cold and calculating.
All that there is, people use the universe, but that then conflicts with the physical universe that astronomers use.
So, I don't know, let's just talk about the system.
And a lot of this research actually comes from Tom Campbell and Stephen Kaufman and some others, so I, you know, these guys have really thought this through a lot.
Why couldn't God be A real geeky kid from Zeta Reticuli who's, you know, set us up.
I knew you were going to pick that planet.
No, you know, why not?
Why not, sure.
Yeah, theoretically could be.
However, the evidence Again, I use the word evidence in a pretty broad sense.
The evidence of the people who have had near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences and spiritual experiences or mystical experiences is not horrifying.
It's not that they're encountering some weird alien race that are overlords or that they're experiencing this geeky kid in his mom's basement creating a universe.
The experiences are typically consistent and they're more holistic, they're more seeing light, they're more connected oriented, and that leads me to think that the greater system, or God, is really this big set of consciousness, this big global consciousness that we really are part of.
Probably dispassionate.
I don't know that it's designing our life for us.
I think that it probably has a mechanism in it where it keeps on improving itself.
Tom Campbell's theory is that it's driven by an evolutionary rule of continuous improvement.
That makes a whole lot of sense to me.
That's really all you need to be able to create a universe over time that has these amazingly perfect All right, well let's flip it for a second, Jim, and let's forget about whether we're in a matrix, but we are, I'll say it again, advancing so quickly that if you look at the last 50 years and project, I don't know, 300 years from now, we might well be in a position to be gods ourselves and to create a world with living
Conscious, aware entities that may or may not have a soul, depending on whether you think that when we attain AI the soul comes along with it, or what we call the soul.
What would be the ethical arguments about us creating such a world ourselves?
Well, it gets a little bit far away from my... I know it does, but why not?
I mean, you're already far away from a lot of standard stuff anyway, so take the jump.
Yeah, I guess I don't... I mean, the ethical argument is, you know, let's not destroy the planet.
And so if we can, you know, create something that is self-sufficient, that works in a holistic way with the rest of the planet, I don't see a problem with it.
Yes, there are going to be dangers to that kind of thing.
You know, somebody may subvert the program and create a Skynet, but... No, but this might be so small, Jim, that it would be something you wouldn't even really see.
I mean, it would be digital.
It would be not real, in a way.
It's the evolution of an ant farm.
Yes, that's right.
That's right.
We would be creating A world, and the beings in that world, the little digital beings in that world who had awareness, and artificial intelligence, or intelligence, why not just use that word, and free will.
They could throw the packets around in their little world any way they wanted to, and we could sort of just watch, and we could either make rules or not make rules for them.
And I mean, what would be the ethics of doing that?
We may be able to do it, but would it be ethical?
Probably.
It doesn't seem like it.
Yeah, I don't know.
To me, I don't I don't see much wrong with that.
Oh, again, I don't see I don't see the harm in it.
And so maybe that's where my lack of experience with ethics comes in.
But, you know, I don't I don't you know, I don't view something that has little harm to the greater uh... good to be something that's unethical uh... so so you
know so what so we so we create some
a eyes that interact with each other i mean we'd we do that now and they're
just not quite as sentient as what you're talking about well you know i'm talking about uh... market is is driven
something like eighty percent by a i c s
i know so that's what i mean We're moving this way anyway, so if you could imagine that we are a digital construct by whoever, then we will eventually get to that place ourselves and become gods, if we wish to be, and create little worlds that are self-sufficient or destroy themselves, or I don't know, we can sit back and watch the game and see what happens.
I mean, I think it would be pretty interesting if it's managed in a in a responsible way
and simply by saying it or performing a a few well let's say miracles uh... that's really a good word you
know like parting
the little digital see that we we've created or I don't know, creating a god for them to
see who then would go away and promise to come back some day or something like that.
I'm going to get in so much trouble.
We would see ourselves in that kind of scenario, wouldn't we?
It sounds very similar to what our own experiences are.
Yes, sir.
And as we become adept at manipulating digital worlds, and we are getting pretty adept, and
boy another three hundred years and what do you think Well, there's another direction we could be heading to.
And I think that's very likely what you're describing, that we're going to create these kinds of AIs and experiment with them and watch them interact with each other and so forth.
Yes, yes, yes.
I don't know that they will still be sentient in the sense that we are.
Because there was a good paper written recently by, I can't remember the name of the individual.
It doesn't matter as long as they think they're sentient.
Well, do they?
I mean, can they think or are they just following rules?
But why do you suppose that?
true consciousness or awareness, it's always just going to be somewhat different.
But why do you suppose that? You sound like you don't think AI will attain consciousness.
And I'm saying, why not figure that when you get to AI, you get to consciousness?
Because that goes back to that argument about, is consciousness an emergent property of
complexity of computation, or does consciousness come first?
I just believe from all of the other evidence that I've been talking about that consciousness is really first.
If consciousness weren't first, you wouldn't have things like OBEs and NDEs and mystical experiences and things like that.
So I think the evidence is strong that Consciousness is primary, not emergent from the brain.
So therefore, consciousness is probably not going to be emergent from silicon either, or from a complex computational system.
Well, maybe.
Does your digital reality theory explain what I think most of the audience knows to be the Mandela Effect?
It does, actually.
Are you familiar with the recent example of that?
The Berenstain Bears?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, that was fascinating to me, and I just checked with a whole bunch of friends of mine.
Most of them said they remember it, as do I, being called Berenstain, spelled S-T-E-I-N.
That's right.
But if you Google it now, everything is spelled S-T-A-I-N, and it's pronounced Berenstain Bears.
Glitch, glitch, glitch!
That, to me, might be kind of the smoking gun of this whole thing.
And the way it could possibly work is, imagine that you have this simulation of sorts, and it goes down a certain path.
And there's data that's created in a simulation.
We all have data that's in our brains.
Data that may be in a kind of a sticky environment that we retain as we go from life to life, and data that we kind of store away from experiences.
And there are these artifacts in the world, artifacts like books and records in the Google Index and things like that.
So we've gone down this path, we've created all this stuff, and then for some reason, God, the system, All that there is, the universe, whatever we want to call it, has replaced some of those artifacts with Berenstain.
And so now we're all baffled because what we have in our conscious recollection, they
didn't replace all the artifacts, we still have in our memories the old thing, but the
other artifacts in this quote reality learning lab have been replaced.
So the model explains it really well.
I don't know why this would happen.
It certainly might be another, you know, it might be, hey, you know guys, here's another
indication that you're not living in a deterministic materialistic reality.
I don't know.
But it really is a fascinating thing.
All right, so let's imagine for a second that we're sitting in front of a computer 300 years from now, and it's a computer we can't even imagine, but it can create these artificially intelligent, sorry Jim, conscious Uh, entities that, uh, are in this world that this amazing computer has created.
But all of a sudden, the very worst happens, and it blue screens.
Mm-hmm.
Oh!
Damn, we don't have it backed up!
Well, what happened to those intelligent, conscious beings that were running around in that, in that packet-causing world?
Uh, they're suddenly gone, and there's no backup.
And so a body might say, well, yeah, but they're not really gone because, well, you know, energy is never really eradicated.
It's still somewhere.
Yeah, I'm not too sure about that.
I mean, that gets to the whole thermodynamics argument about whether information can actually be created or destroyed.
Isn't that what we say about ourselves when we die?
We go on because, you know, we're beings of energy.
Right.
And energy goes on.
The word energy, I think, is used in a different context there, and I think that you know are this bigger system does have backups it does
have all of our history it has you know the quote Akashic record or
whatever it has everything that we've ever experienced is there which is
why we can tap into it at times
so it's all there so yeah if you know if in the current reality we blue screen by
you know getting into a car accident we we live on because you know our our history is still there
We can even look back on our life, which is what people experience when they do have those near-death experiences.
They look back and they replay that backup, if you will.
It all kind of follows.
Well, I'm playing devil's advocate tonight and going way out further on a limb than you are, and I'll get some terrible email, but I don't care.
You know, it's kind of fun exploring the possibilities.
It is.
And, you know, I do consider them to be possibilities, frankly.
Is humanity evolving?
Is there evidence that we're evolving?
And if there is, what is it?
I think there's evidence that we're evolving.
One thing is the murder rate has decreased significantly in most all societies over the last few hundred years.
if you look at the murder rate from europe three hundred years ago i'd
don't remember the numbers maybe a hundred times what it is today
and yeah we have these moments of for these these periods of uh... chaos
you know brought about by uh... economic cycles or uh... you know wars or whatever
may tip things in the other direction but across the longer term
we we definitely seem to have more respect for our fellow humans than we
used to And I also think we have a lot more respect for animals than we used to.
I just remember when I was a kid that there was kind of no thought about You know, taking a pet to be euthanized or treating animals in a zoo as a curiosity.
Now we're concerned about, do they have the right amount of space?
Should they even be in a zoo?
Are they conscious entities?
Should they be on the other side of the glass watching us?
I really applaud these kinds of direction of thinking because I think they are conscious entities just like we are.
They deserve You know, as much protection as we do.
No more Blackfish Act down in San Diego.
Exactly.
So that's a sign of evolution?
So there's two signs of evolution.
I think even this sort of sharing economy that we're in now with Uber and Lyft and Airbnb, people are moving away from The strong materialist urges of amassing things, there's movements toward living more simply, living in smaller places, collecting less stuff, having more experiences, and I think that's a sign of evolution as well.
Oh, you're an optimist!
Yeah, I know I am!
So somehow that commercial, have you ever seen that commercial on TV about The guy in a horror movie watching these people run away.
Let's get in the running car.
No, no, no, no.
Let's hide behind the chainsaws.
You've seen that, right?
No, I haven't seen that one.
Really?
It's an amazing commercial.
If you haven't seen it, we can't talk about it.
Anyway, the horror guy is just shaking his head at the idiots not getting in the running car and going to hide behind the You have to see the commercial to appreciate it.
I'm definitely going to have to look.
And I wonder if our maker, our programmer, isn't sort of looking down at us, you know, shaking his head.
I'm not as much of an optimist.
Now, we can go on the other side of things.
It's looking more and more, every day now, like we're back on a path to blowing ourselves to smithereens.
How about that one?
Well, I tend to agree with you there.
You do?
Alright, we'll talk about that after the break, and we're going to open the lines too, so line up if you want to get on, it's a hell of a discussion.
Come along, get in trouble yourself.
I'm Art Bell.
This is midnight in the desert.
I'm going to tell you when.
It's too late.
I'm going to tell you when.
It's too late.
It's too late.
I'm gonna go ahead and win now.
To initiate a dialogue sequence with Art Bell, please coordinate your phalanges and call 1952-225-5278.
That's 1952.
Call Art.
This is such a cool conversation.
It really is.
It, uh, I know steps on a lot of toes out there, and if I've stepped, I'm sorry.
But you can't consider all this without, well, considering all of this, right?
I've just sent Keith something that I want him to post.
Now, I don't frequently do this in the middle of a show.
I usually would do this prior to a program.
But it's a very, very interesting article entitled, Ten Reasons Life May Be a Computer Simulation.
Ten really good reasons that life may be a computer simulation.
So Keith will post that.
Right, Keith?
Are you listening?
And he'll get that up on Artbell.com.
And I had confirmation from the evil Roland that he will indeed do that.
So I get that, of course, only in my headphones.
So when you hear me talking about hearing voices, it's not anything that deserves attention from a doctor.
It's just that he speaks in my headphones every now and then.
All right, welcome back, Jim.
Thanks Art.
Yeah, it's a fascinating discussion.
That is great.
Oh, one last thing before we get going, the phone numbers.
The national number is area code 952-225-5278.
That's 952-225-5278, or the easy way, 952-CALL-ART.
225-5278, that's 952-225-5278 or the easy way 952-CALL-ART.
Now you can also get in on Skype and you sound really good when you're on Skype if you do
it right.
MITD 5.1 in North America, MITD 5.5 in the rest of the world.
It's a free call no matter where you are.
Okay, now, Jim, we're back.
And I was just saying that, you know, we do appear to be on the edge of blowing ourselves to smithereens, and what was a Cold War boy is starting to heat up again really quickly.
It looks to me like Putin has designs on Yeah, and I do agree with you.
It does seem like things are heating up for whatever political reasons they are, and that is going to happen once in a while.
I think in the bigger picture, these kinds of things are sort of like spikes.
They're local maxima in terms of danger or whatever.
But ultimately, I still think that over a longer period of time, longer timescales, that our world does become more humane and safer in general.
Now, of course, there are certain regions that that's just not the case, but... Well, certainly I think that the old mutual assured destruction thing will still be in play for a while yet with ourselves in Russia.
The trouble is these ISIS guys.
Now, if there ever turned out to be grey goo, I know you know what that is, right?
Yes.
And an ISIS guy had grey goo, that'd be the end of everything, Jim.
That'd be it.
He'd drop it immediately, yelling whatever and getting ready for the 72 virgins and we'd all be gone.
Yep, and I think, you know, we've always faced those kinds of Possible doomsday scenarios.
We definitely had that in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 62.
People back in the Industrial Revolution were talking about that being the end of the world.
The population explosion was supposed to be catastrophic and cause us to not be able to support sustaining life, human life, within 20 or 30 years, and that didn't happen.
Cloning was supposed to be a disaster.
Nanotech was supposed to be a disaster.
All these things have a dangerous side and I'm not saying that it's responsible to just let them all happen and assume that smart scientists and technologists will figure out ways to prevent the ugly stuff from happening.
I think that would be foolish to have that point of view.
But I do think there seems to be some sort of Evening effect is some sort of corrective function that gets applied, whether it's human creativity or whether it's this bigger system, this bigger consciousness system that is sort of looking out for keeping the reality simulation going.
We seem to have this evening effect where things never quite get to too serious of a crisis point.
Yes, we have wars, but we don't destroy humanity.
Now, right now we're in this Possible sixth extinction phase, which is pretty ugly on a greater scale than the Cold War.
The fact that we're wiping out species left and right, that's a pretty ugly thing, too.
Well, then, Jim, I just have to imagine that our digital creators enjoy watching drama.
They could, but it could also be that they aren't watching, that they're not sentient.
You know, we got created through a self-evolving system.
In fact, I think it might have even been Hawking that had one of these ideas about how the universe could have been so finely tuned that it kind of reached back in time and corrected itself.
And he had, I forget what the theory was, but a way to explain how that happened.
Listen, I could keep you to myself, but if I don't start answering phone lines, somebody is going to come and slit my throat.
There are a lot of people who want to talk to you, so I really need to do that.
Robert, hello on Skype.
Hello Art, wonderful show.
I'm calling from the DM talk online.
You have many fans and we love you.
Jim, I truly appreciate your work in this field.
I've been talking to many people over many years trying to convince them of this digital aspect.
The Double Slit Experiment, Wheeler's Delayed Choice Experiment, the Global Consciousness Project.
To me, these absolutely confirm.
My question to you is, since you brought up the Matrix, and that really does seem to be the easiest way to discuss this, Neo in that movie has his, he's in a tube, and of course he's being projected into the Matrix, and that's the nature of my question.
What research have you, with OBEs and the dead experience, Where is our consciousness, in your opinion, outside of this digital reality?
Are we being beamed in?
Is this reality being streamed out to us somewhere else in another higher dimension?
What's your take on that?
Great question, Robert.
I think pretty much the way you described it is most likely the way it is.
If you could imagine the global consciousness, or all that there is, as being like a big cloud.
And your consciousness is a subset of that cloud.
It's sort of a group of bits within that cloud that's organized.
And my consciousness is also in there and so is Art's and everybody else.
And the gnats and the mosquitoes and the cats and the dogs and everybody else have their own little consciousness in that cloud that's separate but all connected together.
And what we do is we interact with another part of the cloud, which Tom Campbell calls the Reality Learning Lab, but it's generated by the system for us to feel hardness, to feel this consensus, so that we evolve.
Remember, the whole goal of the consciousness system is to evolve itself, and it does that by having each part of it break itself into little parts.
Each of which evolve itself.
And how do they evolve itself?
Well, we wouldn't evolve if we were just dreaming and imagining things, because we wouldn't learn from that.
But we do learn from a consensus reality, so the system has evolved to have a mechanism, call it a program that runs, that is this physical reality that we live in, and we connect to it while we're alive.
When we die, that connection goes away, our consciousness remains, we wipe out the The temporary data that we retain during our lifetime, but we retain the soul data or the portion of the learning that we got from our life that was the whole point of our life, and then we reconnect if we want to.
People who have traveled to these realms, and I know that sounds very woo-woo, but there's actually a lot of corroborating evidence of people who do this and have mutual lucid dreaming and things like this.
That can't really be explained through just imagination.
But people who travel to these realms experience these kinds of things and experience this meeting spirit guide that helps design their life so that they can learn to love and provide service and so forth.
So yeah, I think it's separate consciousness entities within a bigger cloud connected to a system that is generating the reality that we're experiencing.
Thank you.
That's great.
Earlier, you talked about energy not being destroyed.
In the holographic universe theory, there is an idea that around black holes, around the edge of the universe, all data is actually printed in a two-dimensional nature, that reality is projected through this.
When we pass back and forth through these barriers, our memories are wiped, so to speak.
So you're saying that that's only a one-way wipe, that we don't forget about this experience when we leave or pass through those barriers?
Well, two different things there.
One is the holographic projection, the whole black hole theory.
That is just a theory, but it's an interesting one in the sense that the people who have done the research have shown that energies and characteristics of a reality in ten dimensions is similar to the one that's projected like on the surface of a black hole.
So it kind of looks like there's evidence for a simulation, But they're using the idea of a black hole as a vehicle for creating this holographic projection.
I don't know that you need to do that.
I think that a lot of these ideas are at sort of a higher level.
The very deep fundamental level of reality is the stuff I'm talking about, the digital consciousness theory.
Quantum mechanics sits on top of that.
Holographic theory probably sits between quantum mechanics and the digital consciousness theory.
And stuff like feeling way up high are things like the secret or placebo effect.
And those are all explained by the holographic theory, which is in turn explained by digital consciousness theory.
Thank you so much.
Shout out.
We all love you, Rhonda.
And thank you for answering my questions.
That was wonderful.
I appreciate it.
Okay, Robert.
Thank you for the call.
Can I ask a really dumb question?
Oh, there are no dumb questions.
Where the hell is the cloud?
And I'm talking about the cloud.
Everybody talks about the cloud.
Well, obviously the cloud can be nothing more than super servers somewhere.
Where's the cloud?
What's a cloud?
The cloud that I'm referring to, you mean?
No.
This cloud?
No, no, no, no.
The cloud that my iPhone 6 reports to.
Oh yeah, there's super servers somewhere.
They're sitting in Amazon's, you know, data servers or other places.
They're in big, you know, computer banks, sealed facilities.
Yeah, exactly.
All networked together but all protected.
I mean everybody just throws that phrase around the cloud like crazy and I've never, I don't know where the cloud is actually.
It's kind of funny because I could have like a mini cloud in my closet by having a backup server that I'm storing movies on or something like that.
It's no different than the other cloud.
That's right.
That's right.
I mean, we all think of it as God-like.
Nothing can ever disappear in the cloud.
And maybe it can't.
I'd love to have that explained to me.
All right.
Overseas somewhere.
Daniel, you're on the air.
Hi, guys.
Hi.
Where are you, Daniel?
Yeah, I'm calling from London.
London.
OK.
Great.
I've got so many questions to ask you guys but the main one I really want to know is if you look at the history of humanity there seems to be kind of patterns emerging in relation to revolutions and wars and so on.
I mean how far do you think we are away from say like a humanity changing events and have you looked into kind of patterns of
uh... you know currency wars world wars trade wars and so on and what do you
think is coming up next next uh... maybe year to three years
question uh... yeah definitely there are patterns uh... in a couple
of levels and i'm sure you're familiar with the
hegelian dialectic where you've got some status quo and then there's some
disruptive uh... you know energy or some disruptive pattern or force
uh... whether it's a political structure or technology or something like that
and they conflict and then there's there's conflict and then there becomes
a synthesis of those two ideas and that that pattern keeps on repeating
throughout history But there also seems to be fractal-like patterns to reality in the way people think, the way you see physical fractals within reality.
And I think that probably has to do with the fact that fractals are a very efficient way to generate things computationally.
So, for example, like a recursive program that wants to generate a shoreline.
It's a lot more efficient to do it in a fractal way than it is to do it through brute force or something.
So some of these patterns that we see in humanity and in our universe, I think, might be signs of the underlying structure.
It's just really hard to correlate it, I think, at this point.
Daniel?
Yeah, no, I agree with you.
What do you think is going to happen next?
Do you think humanity is going to be fed up of the BS that we're being fed at the moment and go their own way?
Or do you think that we're going to be pushed further into, how can I say, 1984?
Right.
No, I think the former, I'm sure Art will say I'm overly optimistic here, but I feel like humanity seems to have at its core the ability to band together and come up with creative ideas, whether you call it tapping into global consciousness or community effects or something like that.
And so, shared economy is one of these things.
We're toppling big companies by giving away patents.
Tesla gave away their patents, which just scares the heck out of other automobile manufacturers that are holding on to their patents.
And it's a whole different way of being, and it runs completely counter to the authoritarian, totalitarian types of mentality, and it seems to be gaining strength.
If anything, I think we would be headed more in that direction and less in a totalitarian direction.
So, proof of your optimism.
Okay.
Michigan, hi, you're on the air with Jim.
Hello?
Hello in Michigan, I can hear you.
You got a speaker?
I'm moving on.
Sorry, it's out of Georgia.
Georgia?
Well, it says Michigan here.
Oh, okay.
Anyway, I was just wondering.
I've been watching this little cartoon on Adult Swim, I guess.
It's a Cartoon Network offshoot of some sort called Rick and Morty.
And they deal, they usually reference a lot of sort of simulated realities.
Right.
And sort of, and coincidentally, I guess, they rewrote an episode from the second season last night where, I guess, the main character, the scientist, creates like a mini universe.
And has to go into that universe to fix a problem.
Right.
And inside that universe, they create another universe.
And they kind of go like two or three layers down.
But I guess my question is, you know, if these rules for sort of like evolutionary or sort of an evolving simulation What are the odds, you think, that in each of these, or in a simulation, that there are sort of like inherited traits from, I guess, the parent universe into the children universes, I guess, that are inside those universes?
Boy, I don't know if I got all that.
Did you?
Yeah, a little bit.
I mean, there can definitely be sort of layers of Okay, Jim, short break.
Hold your thought.
Short break.
We'll be right back.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
We create simulations and within those simulations, you know, other simulations could be created.
And they are going to inherit some patterns and things.
Okay, Jim, short break. Hold your thought. Short break. We'll be right back.
This is Midnight in the Desert. Join us.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
To call the show, if you're east of midnight, call 1952.
Call Art.
If you're what's to admit, I'd call 1952-225-5278.
Uh, uh, yes, well, this is a very, very, very interesting discussion.
We are discussing The Matrix, in effect.
Jim Eldridge is our guest, and he obviously knows what he's talking about.
If you'd like to join the discussion, please feel free to join us on Skype at MITT51 or outside the country, MITT55.
And, of course, somebody wrote to me and said, well, Art, there's no single cloud.
Cloud equals servers working together, looking like one computer.
Many have their own clouds.
They configure servers as clouds who obscure details and pool resources.
It's a buzzword.
Yeah, I know that.
But still, somewhere, I picture A super-secret room with a James Bond-like lock on it, and it says The Cloud up there, right?
I'm sure somewhere there is that.
I hope.
I think of it.
Anyway.
Alright, so Jim, welcome back.
Thank you.
Here comes a call for you.
Jim, outside the country somewhere, I guess.
Hi, Jim.
Hello?
Going once.
Hello?
Yes, hello.
Hello, how are you?
I'm quite well, thank you.
Where are you, probably?
I'm in South Australia.
South Australia, okay.
Hey, Jim, great show.
I was wondering, have you heard of the Roswell Alien interviews?
A bit woo-woo.
Jim, get good and close to the mic.
You're breaking up on us a little bit.
Have we heard of the Roswell what?
Interview?
So much about Roswell, which one?
Yeah, there's one with a lady called Matilda O'Donnell McElroy and it's kind of, there's some similarities there between what Jim was saying about these guys and what this alien was relating to her regarding souls being recycled and things like this and it's just sort of struck a bit of a chord with me.
I mean, I'm not saying Listen, Jim, you're going to have to work a little on your Skype connection.
You're cutting in and out, but you raise a good point.
Honestly, you do.
So let me pick up on something you said anyway.
Jim, earlier you were talking about, you actually mentioned reincarnation, didn't you?
Yes.
Souls being recycled.
I think it's probably a core part of this idea.
But, okay, wouldn't there have to be new souls at some point being generated to account for, what, the now seven billion people on the planet?
Well, it could be.
I mean, this big consciousness system, I'm sure, is huger than we can imagine, and Probably has more space for as many souls as it needs.
Maybe as more souls get generated, each one takes up a different level of percentage of the global consciousness system.
I don't know that it's got some limit.
But one of the things that I did think was kind of interesting is the idea that if you take a bunch of boulders and you put a bunch of boulders together and you can fit some pebbles in between the boulders and then you can fit grains of sand in between the pebbles, And those boulders could be like the human consciousness and the pebbles are more like, you know, a cat or something and those grains of sand are insects and so forth.
So, you know, an efficient way to subdivide your big cloud of consciousness is to have different species with different levels of consciousness all the time.
I know it doesn't quite go to the question about new souls forming, but, you know, I think there is actually some speculation from people who have experienced things where
they their soul has actually incarnated multiple people at the same time and so
it it gets to be kind of a you know an odd question I suppose
it does I still think of my geek up on Zeta Reticuli hitting
F7 for a new soul. You'd have to be sitting there going like that.
You know the thing about UFOs too is that you know if you think about this model where we have
this reality learning lab
and it has rules of physics that we all recognize and follow and interact with but because it is
a digital system that is you know that can
That can generate pretty much anything.
There can be things outside of the normal rules of physics that exist, or things that certain people can see and other people can't see.
There's no reason why that couldn't be the case, for whatever reason.
For example, with a virtual reality game or a massively online role-playing game, You would have to have a certain level of spiritual points in order to see the monsters.
You know what I mean?
So this, you know, all of this could be part of the reason that some people see UFOs and some don't, or that they seem to behave, you know, counter to the laws of physics.
Good point.
Sean, hello there.
Yeah, hello.
Sean, you're in kind of a noisy location or something.
Where are you?
I actually sit on my back in a balcony in Japan.
There's construction going on, so I apologize for the background noise.
Oh, it's alright.
If it's Japan, we'll put up with it.
Go ahead.
Alright.
Yes, sir.
My niece and nephew play a game called Minecraft quite a bit.
Oh, my daughter plays it.
Oh, they love it.
At any rate, they've been getting into a little bit of science with their junior high school classes, where they build electrical circuits.
Even computer circuits within the game itself, which it kind of acts like a, I don't know, emulator for... You remember the old Heath Board kits?
Mm-hmm.
Well, they do kind of the same thing, but they do it in Minecraft.
They use the game's mechanics to build clocks and even whole computer systems.
Well, that is just within the game itself.
And the game is just one encapsulation of the world.
I just had a mind bender of a thought.
What if this matrix you're talking about is just one encapsulation among many, and whoever's, or like one matrix among many, you know, six billion people in one world, but another, I don't know how you put it, universe, there's six billion other people, and they're living out their entire thing, and our masters, or whoever's running this whole system, are just running entire, you know, huge farms and stuff.
What would you call that outer reality?
Well, no, that's a terrific question.
We talked about this reality learning lab.
That could be just one segment of the organization of the global consciousness system that we all attach to, and there could be another reality learning lab right next to it that another set of souls attach to, or whatever.
So yeah, definitely a possibility.
Tom Campbell kind of formulates this a little bit and he calls them physical matter realities and non-physical matter realities and has a whole big picture of what could be.
The interesting thing to me is that over time our horizons keep on expanding.
There was a time when we were like a continental society.
We didn't realize there was anything beyond the continents.
Then we got on boats and realized there were other continents out there.
Then we were a planetary society.
Then we became a solar society when we realized there were other planets.
We became a galactic society and so forth.
The discovery of multiple galaxies in the universe as we know it was really within the
last hundred years or so.
Then maybe 10 or 15 years ago people like Max Tegmark started talking about parallel
realities of different types.
And now, what you're talking about, Sean, and what I also covered in the book a little bit, is the idea that those parallel realities could be in the physical sense, but outside of that is stuff that we could never connect to, completely other sections of parallel realities that are physical as well.
So, yeah, great example of how we can be expanding our horizons.
Oh, well, thank you.
All right, Sean, before you go, I want to ask you a question.
Without giving it, you've got a Japanese last name, but your English is absolutely perfect.
What's up with that?
Long story?
Long story.
I'm actually a white guy from America.
With a Japanese last name.
Uh, pseudonym.
A pseudonym.
Alright, well, thank you for the call.
Don't read into it, sir.
Have a good one.
Take care.
Alright, let's go to the phone and Atlanta, you're on the air with Jim.
Hi.
Megalazzo's, Bart.
Thank you.
Okay, I have been waiting for this topic forever, so.
Here it is.
Yeah, real quick, I don't know if you can get Alan Moore on as a guest, but another I'm a big fan of the graphic novel, Planetary, by Warren Ellis.
And he plays with the idea of the universe being a hologram a lot.
And one of his stories featured an intergalactic informational drive which would scoop up information from the informational subspace underneath and scoop it up and, you know, hack it, use that as fuel to Well, I'm not sure I fully understand that.
space engine for a spaceship.
And I was wondering how you think that would be possible, using that, if using that.
Well, I'm not sure.
I fully understand that.
It reminds me of the, what was the Douglas Adams series, where
they had the infinite probability drive.
But so I'm not sure what the fuel is there.
It does remind me a little bit of... Sorry, go ahead.
The fuel would be the code of the universe, the underlying subspace of the universe.
So it's basically hacking the universe to propel this ship.
Okay, well that's an interesting point of view.
NASA's testing this this EM drive, that they don't know how it works right now,
that seems to be generating more thrust than it should.
And nobody knows how that's getting its energy.
Energy and matter just being elements of data, if the data's organized in the right way,
then it could probably produce a drive.
Okay.
James, you're on the air with Jim.
Hi, Jim.
Hi, Art.
First time calling.
OK, you're going to have to get good and close to your mic.
OK.
Can you hear me now?
That's a little better, I think.
Go ahead.
All right.
I'm just wondering if you've ever heard of the Law of One Series, because this sounds awfully like that series that was supposedly a channeling of a million-year-old plus entity called Ra.
And he talks all about this stuff.
And I know One of your buddies, I forgot his name, David Wilcock, talks about the Law of One A Lot, but you should really check that out because it has some insights and, you know, people choose to believe in a lot of things because it's so, like, I should say I'm a very analytic thinker and it's like religion and science put together, but it talks exactly like you're talking about.
You might want to check it out and get some insights, at least some food for thought for later on.
All right.
All right.
Appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for that, James.
Yeah, I always look for sort of confluence of ideas, and there are tons of them.
So that's another new one.
That's good.
Okay.
Outside the country again.
Marty, where are you?
Good morning.
I'm in Bristol in the... Oh, boy.
More trouble with Skype.
You need to speak up right into the mic, Marty.
You're in Bristol?
Yeah, I'm in Bristol in the UK.
Is that signing better?
No, it's not really very good.
Do you have a... Marty, do you have a headset mic?
Um, hold on.
You see, if people would call with a headset mic, it would sound so much better.
Just in case he has one, and plugs it in, then, uh... Actually, I'm using my Bluetooth, uh... No, no Bluetooth!
Get rid of the Bluetooth, Marty.
Go to the phone.
Okay.
Now, this will be a good demonstration.
We've done this before.
I think the phone will be better.
Bristol is actually one of my favorite towns in the UK.
I've had a lot of fun there.
So, yeah, it's good to hear somebody from Bristol.
It is.
I wish we could hear them.
Marty?
Any better, Art?
Oh, my God, Marty.
It's like day and night.
Don't ever call me with Bluetooth.
I'm so glad.
Talk into the phone and speak.
Is that any better?
Go!
Um, my, my, um, I, I had a, um, thing that just popped into my mind earlier.
It was something John Lear said some time ago.
Yes.
It was about the, um, the soul recycling thing.
And he said, this was going back years ago now, that there was a machine that takes care of all this recycling business.
I believe he mentioned the moon, didn't he?
That it went to the moon?
That's right, yeah.
And he said the, um, the actual machine was faulty, and that's why a lot of people these days are saying that, um, you know, they're born into the wrong body.
And, you know, some people believe they're actually females or males, and they're trapped in the wrong bodies, if that makes any sense.
It's actually a very interesting thing to suggest as it relates to this topic, yes.
Yeah, and actually... I'm sorry, go ahead, Marty.
Yeah, it's just, um, I was interested on your, um, your thoughts on that, really.
Yeah, sure.
To be honest, my thoughts are that the whole, you know, soul recycling being on the moon is a bit odd to me, and it's kind of a one-person view of how this might work, as opposed to, you know, the greater system that I've been talking about is really consistent with a whole lot of other cultures and views.
But, that said, people who have experienced, say, past lives or tapped into these kinds of things, Do you say that when you recycle you may go from being a male to a female or vice versa?
so it's it's perfectly possible that you're used to being a male and Now you're or vice versa in your next body is the opposite gender, and it doesn't feel quite right to you as a matter of fact generally Jim from birth or from the moment that a person can relate their sexuality or their feelings to Of their sexuality, they're saying, I'm in the wrong body.
Yeah, it might not be what they were expecting for one reason or another.
And one of the things I find kind of interesting is the whole nature versus nurture argument, especially as it relates to identical twin studies.
So identical twins who have not been separated, grew up with the same genetics or nearly the same genetics in the same environment, And yet, one of them has one set of values, the other has another set of values.
One of them is homosexual, the other one is heterosexual.
You know, what explains these differences could be something that it's more the soul.
It's more, you know, their innate nature and where they were previously, or their whole history of their soul evolution could be completely different than their sibling.
Fascinating.
Maybe we could just call it a recycling error.
We could do that.
Alright, on the phone, you're on the air with Jim.
Hi.
Hi, Art, how are you doing?
Very well, thank you.
Thank you for taking that call, and I don't know if you remember, but I've called before about this very topic, so I'm really happy and excited to have tuned in today to listen to Jim talk.
I just have two, I guess, two brief questions.
My first question is about whether or not, Jim, I'm sorry, if you've read or heard about, I guess, these findings about Quasars and the way that they're aligned. There's an
article a while ago that was talking about their alignment Not lining up with how scientists have predicted that they
seem to be aligned Not randomly, but connected despite the fact that there are
many light-years Separated from each other and if this has any you know
impact on on your studies Okay, what do you want to want me to take that one first or
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, please Yeah, so I have not read that.
I do remember when Quasar were first discovered, the speculation was that they were something very different than what they think they are now.
I think it was, you know, considered to be Like a big chunk of primordial fireball or something like that.
And over time, they've realized that, you know, no, they're not.
They have a more mundane explanation.
So this alignment could be significant in the sense of, you know, a structured universe or a designed universe, but it could also be something that's well explained by, for example, the fact that the universe is, you know, the physical universe is much greater than, much larger than we think it is.
And therefore we see patterns that shouldn't be there if it was smaller.
I don't know if that makes any sense.
But there are certain patterns that they've now attributed to the likelihood that the universe is a different size than was originally thought.
Yeah, I think that makes absolute sense.
And one of the more fascinating things is that there seems to be this I don't know if I would call it planning, but the sort of, like, perfect order about how things line up on the different filaments in the universe and, you know, with the way you get down into, you know, the extreme micro scale with, like, Planck length and the size of things, it seems as if there's, you know, this sort of perfect structure or something approaching perfection that may not be accidental.
But my last question is a little bit more lighthearted, and I know you mentioned earlier that If we knew for a fact that we lived in a simulation, that it really wouldn't affect our lives in any meaningful way.
And I disagree, I think, just in a matter of degree, which is, you know, what do we do if we know that we're in a simulation?
And some people online had mentioned, you know, I think that the solution would be to work very hard to make our own simulation.
So that way, if anybody above us is ever watching us, They'll see that we have a simulation, and then they'll have this existential moment of crisis where they're going to feel like they can't pull the plug on us.
Because then maybe there's something above that, and then you get turtles all the way down and all that.
but i was my last comment thank you so much art and shout out to the art bells
and then the desert facebook groups the best group around all right thank you
all right thank you very much there are all these groups that spring up the
support of the show thank you all um if i may art on that topic
um the you know he what he talked about was one type of simulation the the kind of simulation that i'm
referring to that has a you know a greater purpose and and have
the reincarnation and everything that there is something to you know
understanding and believing in in that idea that it can be significantly
um changing to your life and to your your outlook So, for example, you realize that we're no longer in this hedonistic survival game that's based on fear and scarcity of resources.
Therefore, as a result, we have better treatment of and respect for fellow humans and other species.
If we knew that souls are independent of Real religion or region or something like that would be less likely to conduct wars.
So I think there is, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, in this this model, really, to me, makes the only thing that makes sense.
It explains quantum mechanics.
Anomalies explains almost everything.
And if it is true, then, you know, it's actually kind of an inspirational idea.
All right.
That in mind, here is somebody for you on Skype who calls himself CryptoLord.
I don't know if that was just for today's program, but you're on the air.
That's actually Phil Artes.
That's my nickname I use in a lot of the games I play online.
Okay, Phil.
Well, that's all I can see when you call, buddy.
So, to me, you're CryptoLord.
Yeah, I hope my Skype's working right now because it was cutting in and out.
I had to call back in because the call got dropped a few minutes ago.
With the discussion that's going on tonight, is there a possibility that when we go to sleep Well, that's double trouble.
It's possible that even when we're awake, it's not our own.
Jim?
Well, it's a beautiful question because we could really dive down into what reality is and what consciousness is and how dreams relate.
To me, dreams aren't that much different than the waking state.
It's a subjective experience.
And people have a pseudo-consensus reality when they have something called mutual lucid dreams.
Lucid dreams are when you can control your dream and basically dream what you want to, carry out your own kind of fantasy.
But mutual lucid dreams happen between people who could be separated by miles, and they're experiencing each other in the dream and experiencing the same environment and that kind of thing, and then they write their notes down.
and compare them later on.
So experiments have done where mutual lucid dreams have actually been sort of initiated
between people.
The Monroe Institute has done this.
I've had a mutual lucid dream with somebody once too.
So yeah, the dreaming aspect is another subjective experience using the same constructs that
our physical reality uses.
Crypto lord?
I guess we just hope that somebody doesn't throw the switch and turn everything off.
I don't think that's going to happen.
Well, one good thing about it, Jim, if it does, you'll never know it.
It'll just be, you know, lights out.
Lights out.
OK, Crypto, thanks.
Thanks, Art.
Take care.
Very quickly, Goldendale, I think, Washington, hello.
Hello.
Hello.
This is John.
Hey, John.
Hello, John.
Am I online?
You are.
You're on the air, John, so go ahead.
Okay.
So I have visions.
Good.
They're like information visions.
Yes.
So I would have like a picture that would come into my mind.
Yes.
And then there's an idea that I can explore dimensionally.
Okay.
And I had one related to the subject tonight.
And it showed you what?
What I saw was, we think of like black holes, being something that's like a million light
years away in the center of the universe or something.
Not that many light years, but yes.
But whatever, you know, long ways away.
Yes.
But they don't have to be like giant objects.
They could be very small.
We have telescopes that would seem to indicate they're large, but go ahead.
There are many black holes.
There are?
Yes.
Well, the vision that I had and the idea that I was able to explore within that was that
each individual is a black hole.
And that we're closely associated.
Black holes absorb everything that comes near them.
And I don't know if individuals were yet capable of that.
Well, what I was thinking was, there's an event horizon on the black hole.
Yes.
And that you could navigate, that somehow whoever we are can navigate forward and backward in time associating with other black holes who are individuals.
Well there certainly is a theory that if you enter the event horizon of a black hole you may well travel back in time or you may be scattered Forever.
I don't know.
Jim?
Yeah, I mean, it sounds a little bit like the holographic theory of the black hole event horizon mapping to a reality.
So I'm not sure I think there's much evidence for that other than sort of a mathematical match.
But that's an interesting idea.
Did you hear the story I had on the beginning of the black hole that spits something out?
Oh, I did.
Yes.
Whatever got spit out of a black hole I don't want to meet.
Boy, I thought that was virtually impossible and yet two separate NASA telescopes verify that it happened.
Yeah, if I remember right, didn't Hawking, isn't Hawking radiation something that is slightly below the surface of the event horizon but due to quantum mechanical probabilities it exists Also on the outside of the event horizon.
Right.
That's right.
So, theoretically, that's also something that is, you know, coming out of the black hole.
But this is something different you're talking about, right?
Well, I don't know what I'm talking about.
I just read the story that said that NASA had two telescopes and actually observed something getting spit out of a black hole.
And I don't think ever in all the history that I can recall, I've ever heard of such a thing.
But, you know, and if it was observed by one telescope, you might question it, you know, as some aberration, but they saw it on two separate telescopes.
Supposedly, nothing comes out of a black hole.
Yeah, and supposedly we can't go faster than the speed of light, and I think, I don't know, I think a lot of these laws are made to be broken.
Yeah, it's like what comes into Vegas stays in Vegas only No, that doesn't work at all.
We're going to have to break here.
Everybody stand by.
What a program, huh?
This will take about three shows.
I'm going to be doing a lot of singing.
From the Kingdom of Nigh, this is Midnight in the Desert with Art Bell.
Please call the show at 1-952-225-5278.
That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
Jim Elbridge is my guest.
What a wild show.
I could use three shows, three more shows like this before we'd even begin to get a good understanding of what this is all about.
Maybe there's a cosmic reset button up there.
One of these days, my little buddy on Zeta Reticuli will push reset.
And the next thing you'll see, some real good-looking gal offering some guy an apple or something.
And there we go again.
Let's go overseas.
Jasmunda in Australia.
You're on the air.
Hello.
Hi Art.
Hi.
What a fantastic show.
I think it's one of my favourite topics now, and I think it's actually even scarier than ghosts or demons or any such thing.
It is.
Now, what really scares me, I think, is the fact that we could be living in a simulation within a simulation within a simulation, and even if we get out of our simulation, we're in another simulation.
Now, do you remember or recall a Star Trek The Next Generation episode where Data was on the holodeck and he used to play Sherlock Holmes fantasy games or whatever and he had a nemesis Moriarty and Moriarty became self-aware and the whole episode ended up with him thinking he escaped the holodeck but really he was just within another simulation.
And I think that concept scares me the most.
Within, within, within, Jim?
Yeah.
Yeah, so why does that scare you?
I don't know, I just, I think it's just scary to think that, well, one, that we could be living in a prison, so to speak, and even if we got out of the prison, well, we're still in the prison.
Well, Australia, it shouldn't scare you.
Australia originally was a prison anyway, right?
That's true.
As long as the life is good, then, well, maybe it's not so bad being in a prison.
So, yeah, I guess one thing I'd say is that Most of us don't feel like we're living in a prison now, and certainly the reports from people who have had near-death experiences is that that's not a prison, that that's a wonderful, wonderful place.
But even when they're in that place, they still want to get back into reality and experience more of the physical reality.
So, you know, of all the research I've done, of all the people who have experienced these kinds of things, I've never really found anybody who doesn't want to continue living in the simulation, if that's what it is.
Boy, I've got to argue with that one, Jim.
I mean, all we ever hear about are the ones who say, either, I was told by the being that I have to go back, or the ones who said, I want to go back.
Now, the ones who said, oh, to hell with that.
Let's go to the light.
Let's keep going.
We don't ever hear from them again.
Because what they've done is reincarnate.
That's right.
They go to the light and they either stay there or they reincarnate.
That's right.
The only ones we hear from are the ones who either are told to go back or want to go back.
Jazz, would you say that is correct?
Well, perhaps the light that everyone is seeing is the spotlight the prison guards are shining on them, and the ones that continue towards the light get shot, and the ones that go back are the ones that go back into the prison.
Maybe, but why would all the people who see the light have this overwhelming feeling of positive experience or of euphoria?
I wouldn't get that from a prison light.
It's probably not.
Thanks, Jazz.
Thank you.
See you later.
Pretty good.
It's a good topic, no question.
Hans, hello.
Oh, hello.
How are you?
Very well, thank you.
Good to talk to you.
I saw a video on YouTube a while ago about some lady talking about her experiences on LSD and explaining that her and her friends were very heavy into LSD at one point in time.
They were able to communicate non-verbally and hear each other's voices in their head by using heavy doses of LSD and they said they confirmed it by asking each other to perform different things like picking their hands up or winking an eye or vice versa.
I don't know.
That's pretty heavy duty.
Jim, you want to talk about that?
Oh sure, yeah.
I've known of people who have both independently seen families of aliens at a swimming pool while on LSD.
So, you know, I'm not one who uses this kind of thing, although I have had an experience with DMT, which is, you know, very different, but some of the research does say that You know, the brain is kind of like a radio, and you can switch into different realities.
There might be shortcuts of ways to be able to connect with people or tap into different realities.
I wouldn't recommend doing that, but for those who have experimented with it, Rick Strassman did some great research on DMT, and most of the people who Uh, experience that in a, you know, in a clinical environment felt that the reality they experienced on DMT was more real than the one that they, you know, they normally live in.
Holy smokes, Jim, you did DMT in a, in a clinical environment?
Uh, not in a clinical environment.
Not so much, huh?
That'll be another show.
We'll do a whole nother show on that.
I had no idea.
The things you learn about scientists.
Caller, anything else?
No, no, that was it.
Thank you very much.
Boy, that was enough, too.
All right, thank you very much for the call, and take care.
Let's go to, oh, I don't know, Marion in Romania.
Doesn't sound like a good connection.
I hear an echo.
Well, I wonder, what if all celestial bodies are alive and we have just a parasitic life form on it, on many layers?
I mean like human, animals, bacteria, whatever.
All these celestial bodies being probably very powerful entities, they can create multi-dimensional realities, which in our understanding are sort of fiber-optics communication, so to speak.
Or a parasitic lifestyle, that's interesting.
So, is your question about whether or not celestial bodies have consciousness?
Yeah, I was thinking that they are living entities and we are just sort of parasites on them, like planets, moons, so on and so on.
Like the Archaea hypothesis.
Right, exactly.
Yeah, and I, you know, actually, I don't discount that.
I think the earth is an evolving organism.
If you try to pin down what life really is, things like fire exhibit the five characteristics of life.
I don't think fire really is life, but the earth seems to react.
It seems to have a breathing kind of apparatus and very well might have consciousness.
I don't totally discount that.
OK.
To the phones.
You're on the air with Jim.
Hello?
Hello.
Go ahead.
Hi Art.
Hi Jim.
I'm Ted calling from Tracy, California.
And I had two questions, but if you don't have time since it's the end of the show, I can just ask one.
OK.
Go for the most important one first.
OK.
I was calling to ask if it's possible that our universe is like an atom in a much larger universe?
Yeah, so that reminds me of, what was that movie back in the 80s?
Oh, I forget the name.
But anyway, yeah, I mean, I think this is a question that somebody asked before about, you know, the layers of consciousness or the layers of reality.
That's right.
And it very well could be.
So I, you know, I think that's a very real consideration.
Okay, Mario, outside the country someplace.
G'day, and Jim, yeah I'm calling you all the way from Australia, and I've got a question and also a bit of an amusing comment that I've sort of stumbled upon.
Sure.
So my question is, because of the lifestyle and the limitations of knowledge that we have and that we live in, how can we not assess that Basically, the universe or simulated universe theory is nothing different than saying God's angry and it's thundering.
So, I'm just curious, have you determined or is there anything that you've come across that sort of overrides this theory?
Well, so to me, I look at evidence.
I try to follow a scientific model which is Uh, you know, looking at different categories of evidence and what they imply.
Um, and based on all of that, if you imagine, say, a Venn diagram where certain anomalies, um, you know, in an anomaly space, you put circles around the things that one theory can describe.
The thing that can describe everything is what I'm talking about.
So that's actually a valid form of science, which is finding the best fit explanation for all the anomalies that exist.
Yeah, it's a little bit beyond kind of a, you know, a very superfluous idea of God being angry.
This is really based on a lot of research and a lot of real science.
So you're saying it's basically overlapping results and pretty much?
Well, I think we talked about some of the categories of evidence earlier on, but things like You know, the fact that there's a digital nature to things, that infinite resolution breaks down in physics, that consciousness doesn't emanate from the brain, that computational systems behave exactly the way quantum mechanics as reality behaves, the results from quantum mechanics experiments like the double slit experiment, like all of these things add up to kind of point to one, you know, one global theory.
Which is that the universe is digital and the conscious is primary.
Yeah, very interesting.
And the comment that I sort of wanted to put forth, I did come across at some point in time a video on YouTube that used a simulated universe and the people who were actually within it were students.
And the way that they pretty much designated who would have what job is by the life that they led.
So trippy sort of idea that technically the experiences that we're going through could potentially be what jobs we're going to be assigned to in the future when we wake up.
So think about that one for a while.
That's an interesting idea.
Okay, so Jim, how was DMT?
Well, um, boy, I probably shouldn't have even said that, but I guess, uh, you know, now that the cat's out of the bag, I, uh, Basically, it's kind of the way it's described.
The reality that I was able to observe visually completely went away, and a new one took its place.
The one that took its place was very fractal.
It was beautiful.
It was unfolding colors, flowers, geometrical patterns, like fractal patterns.
But at the same time, I was fully conscious.
I mean, I could hear what was happening around me.
I could hear people moving around in the room.
I knew exactly what was going on.
All I had to do was get past the two minutes or three minutes that this experience took, and then I was just back to where I was before.
So, it was really an interesting idea, and there was somebody who wrote a paper on this.
I think the guy's name was Gallimore, if I remember, where he looked at the patterns In the brain on DMT and not on DMT.
By the way, DMT is, other than sugar, fructose or glucose, it's the one thing that passes through the blood-brain barrier.
So, it's like your brain craves this as much as it craves this one other chemical, glucose, that it gets its nourishment from.
So, it occurs naturally.
It occurs naturally in the brain.
It's a mystery.
Some people say it changes the channel of your perception.
Others say that it is just hallucinatory.
It's hard to say.
I understand why you tried it.
Did you come away with any insights?
Did any channels get flipped?
Not really, to be honest.
I was with somebody who actually did experience other entities.
They talk about machine elves and these kinds of things.
Sure.
I didn't see that.
We're very short on time here.
We've got more shows to do, buddy.
On the phone, you're on the air with Jim.
Hello?
Hi.
Hi, I'm calling from Massachusetts.
I have a question.
If we live in the Matrix, can you speculate As to how we one day may escape it?
I mean, if this is a construct or like a prison, I mean, could we one day escape it?
And do you have any philosophy or ideas or concepts as to how we may one day do that?
And do you have another idea as to where we actually could be in the time-space continuum?
I hope these questions make sense.
Art, thanks very much.
I look forward to your response.
Thank you.
Bye.
Okay.
Escape first, I guess.
So I think we're outside of the time-space continuum that we know of because that time-space continuum is an artifact of the Reality Learning Lab, which is part of this system.
So we really exist outside of that.
Do we want to escape it?
I don't know that we do.
You know, if we want to, I don't have a theory on how to do it, but again, like I said before, from the people who have done Very quickly on Skype, Bill, you're on the air with Jim.
out of body experiences or near death experiences or past life regressions or whatever, there
isn't a whole lot of desire to escape.
Very quickly on Skype, Bill you're on the air with Jim.
Yeah, you had a guest on the other night and when you talked about the cloud, Art, it made
me kind of recollect, he said, our long term memory has a possibility of being stored elsewhere.
So, that made me want to call in and I'll take my comment off the air.
I'm not sure what comment to give you, but Jim, are you?
Yeah, so I think that there is some evidence that the brain's capacity is limited and that long-term memory, so for example, if you add up the amount of bits that it takes to experience the full reality that we experience, you know, all the information that comes in peripherally, subliminally to us and records, the brain capacity isn't
enough to hold all of that in a lifetime.
And yet, some people are able, I think it's called eidetic memory, something like that,
they're able to recall what they had for breakfast on a particular day and recall the scene around
them.
Some people are able to tap into very much details around specific things, which tells
me that they have access to everything.
I wonder if that is a burden.
It's got to be somewhere else.
I wonder if it's a burden as well as a blessing.
Might be.
Can't imagine it.
All right, listen, we could do, you know, every line is full.
My computers are going inside the country, outside the country.
We could answer calls from now until doomsday, but we're done for tonight, Jim.
I've got to have you back.
There's so much to talk about.
We'd love to come back, Art, and I really appreciate that your calls came from around the world.
That was really cool.
Oh, yeah.
That's what we do here.
Thank you, my friend, and until next we meet, and it won't be long.
Take care.
Thank you very much.
All right.
From the high desert to the 25 time zones.
Circling around out there.
It really was a good one.
We gotta do this again.
goodnight goodnight
goodnight midnight in the desert
and there's wisdom in the air I've been looking for the answer
all my life I've felt given of the world we live in
oh, we live in Midnight in the desert, and we're listening.
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